Even from the early days of 1860, when your countryman Wenham experimented with gliders, the development of aerodynamics has been a systematic search for facts. The well–directed efforts of Wilbur and Orville Wright to search out the fundamentals of flight gave a profound impetus to contemporary and later experimenting, and libraries have been filled with the orderly research of aeronautical science. The development of manufacturing practice, however, has been dictated by the immediate needs of the moment, largely without the benefit of methodical study.

I trust I shall not be suspected of pleading a case either for the art of manufacturing, or for aeronautical science, as in the early days it was not unusual for me to find myself designing with one hand, while, in a manner of speaking, manufacturing with the other.